Primary & secondary ide reversed

[Bud C]

Hello,
I am testing an HP PIII desktop. When I connect a WD 60GB HDD & CD ROM as Primary master & slave, they both work. When I add 2 40GB Seagates as Secondary IDE master & slave, the Phoenix BIOS sees all 4 of them correctly, but the system sees the Seagates as C: & D: and the WD & CD as E: & F: The system boots from the secondary IDE, and FDisk shows the drives as 1=40GB, 2=40GB and 3=60GB. The Operating system is irrelevant, because it happens before boot. And no, I have not reversed the cables. Have you ever seen this before. Got any ideas??

Bud C.

 

[sminlal]

Two items:

1) I'm thinking that if you unplug both cables from the motherboard and plug them into their opposite connectors, then the Seagate drives should show up as disk 3 and 4.

2) But the drive letters probably won't change if you do (1) above because once a drive letter is assigned Windows remembers the disk serial number and always assigns the same drive letter to it no matter where it's plugged into. You can manually reassign the drive letters (except for the system drive) using Disk Manager.

 

[Paperdoc]

If your machine is booting from the Secondary IDE channel Master, that must be because your BIOS is set to do that. Go into BIOS Setup and go to the Boot Priority Sequence setting screen. Set it to try booting from your optical drive first (Primary Slave), then the HDD you actually want to use, the Primary Master 60 GB unit. Do NOT set any other devices as boot options. Save and reboot. This should get you where you want to be.

 

[Bud C]

Two items:

1) I'm thinking that if you unplug both cables from the motherboard and plug them into their opposite connectors, then the Seagate drives should show up as disk 3 and 4.

2) But the drive letters probably won't change if you do (1) above because once a drive letter is assigned Windows remembers the disk serial number and always assigns the same drive letter to it no matter where it's plugged into. You can manually reassign the drive letters (except for the system drive) using Disk Manager.

Thanks for your response, sminlal. The cables are correctly connected, so reversing them assumes it is normal to boot from secondary master first. My boot sequence is CDROM, FDD, HDD, removable storage, network. That should cause primary master boot.

I like your point 2), but my C: drive should remain C: after adding 2 drives to the secondary IDE, agreed? I could change the drive letters for D:, E: & F:, but that doesn't solve the secondary master boot phenomenon. I'm stumped.

BudC

 

[sminlal]

Perhaps I'm a little confused. In your original post, when you say "the system sees the Seagates as C: and D:", I assumed you were talking about how the drives appeared in Windows. Are you in fact talking about how the BIOS labels them?

 

[Paperdoc]

Take a close look again at the way your Boot Priority Sequence is set. When you go there to examine and set it, it will only show you devices that exist at that time. So, when you first set it up there only was ONE HDD (the Master on the Primary IDE channel) and you set that as the third option. After that you added two Seagates on the Secondary IDE channel. If you go to Boot Priority again you should be able to see separately all three HDD's as options for boot devices, not just "HDD". You must make sure the particular one you want to use (the 60 GB Master on the Primary channel) is the one set as your third option.

MAYBE when your BIOS boots from the Master on one IDE channel it automatically assigns that one some priority so that any other HDD on that same channel is assigned the next alphabet letter name. Once you get it booting the way you want, go into Windows Disk Management and use the lower right pane to change the letters assigned to the several drive units to the ones you want.

 

[Bud C]

Perhaps I'm a little confused. In your original post, when you say "the system sees the Seagates as C: and D:", I assumed you were talking about how the drives appeared in Windows. Are you in fact talking about how the BIOS labels them?

Sorry, what I meant by the 'system' is actually fdisk, which shows the 2 40GB Seagates as drive 1 & 2, and the 60gb WD as drive 3. I'll take another look and confirm this info. Thanks,

BudC